Revisited: Hong Kong Phooey

While I, and most of people I know, would be wildly hypocritical as to espousing on the evils of bootlegging and downloading, it doesn't take a genius to know where blame lies when comparing the number of record stores to the number of people in Hong Kong (the same, however, doesn't ring true of DVD stores, go figure). Music fans gotta go somewhere, though, and because of that, a whole host of used cd kiosks are there for the picking.

On the one occasion I DJed in Hong Kong, the promoter had told me he wanted an old school hip hop and rnb/soul/funk set (the crowd, however, had different ideas). I ended up downloading a good majority of my regular picks, but hit the used cd kiosks for backup.

I scoured around for what was avail, and found one early/mid 90s hip hop compilation, which is kinda like finding an albino in a crowd of Oompa Loompas. I picked it up for the hits (Beastie Boys, Maestro Fresh Wes, etc), but it also featured this Redhead Kingpin hit, which, apart from Afrika Bambataa, is the only clear sampling of Kraftwerk that I can think of:


The other real memory I have of Redhead Kingpin was from the Do the Right Thing soundtrackaround the same time as the Do the Right Thing soundtrack (thanks for the edit, Jay; the soundtrack opted to feature another Teddy Riley-produced track, "My Fantasy" by Guy), wherein they were quite obviously eclipsed by Public Enemy, like following the Sex Pistols on Bill Grundy (I was 13 or 14 when I first heard "Do the Right Thing," when the biggest hip hop fans at school were the Mormon kids, which is about the weirdest memory I have):


For a crowd of kids that doesn't remember Michael before Thriller, I'm not sure how I came across the Black Caesar soundtrack, but there you go. This was the first JB album recommended to me as a must-have outside the Star Time boxset (by Sam Prekop, nonetheless). I remember the Sweet Charles interview from Waxpoetics wherein he claims all the JBs thought Mr. Brown was a horrible singer, but a listen to any number of his slow jams should dispel that:


As a big fan of the various Soul Source remix albums for the J5, finding the James Brown one was a big treat. The series generally pairs well-known Japanese artists with hits from the featured artist, and thus the JB one features more "Sex Machine" remixes than is necessary. The only real remix that really works beyond the kitsch value is UFO's remix of "Deep In It":


By that point, the lustre off UFO has dulled. Their 3rd album released stateside, some forgettable spy movie wankfest, was largely a mis-step that only the most ardent fans (cough cough Faust cough cough) could enjoy. Their following albums were never released domestically stateside. I picked up V, a sleepy after-hours jazz affair, which featured more than enough Johnny Hartman knock-offs that put the final nail in the UFO coffin. This one track picks up the pace with a Latin tinge, and probably one of few tracks worth mentioning past UFO's second album:


In the end, I spun to a largely Chinese-American crowd of kids spending their summer vacations visiting their repatriated parents. Shoulda just bought that Nelly album. This time around, I'm just buying clothes.
__________________________________________

Btw, am I the only one that likes the new Lauryn Hill track? I mean, it's been a gazillion years....

Revisited: That Crazy Sound From Way Out

For a period in time, I was flying through Japan quite regularly on my way to Shanghai. It's true what they say about Japan: if there's one place where you're going to find any record, however rare, it's Tokyo.

That said, I never was able to find this De La Soul vinyl single, which was supposedly a promo single where they battle Parappa the Rapper on one side, and leave it blank on the other. I searched high and low for that record, and never did find it.

And now comes the muthafuckin' rub named Youtube: if there's going to be one place to beat Japan for rarities (and oddities), it's that site. And, as my luck seems to go for that record, alls I can find is this 30 second clip featuring De La and your ubiquitous Japanese rnb singer, Double:



The full-length video, of course, has since been removed. Goddamn!

That said, I did stumble across this De La rarity on my various travels, wherein they back up another Japanese rnb duo named "True Kiss Destination" on a track called "Victim," from around 1999:


There's no end to hip hop artists heading east to work on a Japanese-only release, and I can't begin to do the research to compile a definitive list. This next track is on here solely because I remember Jay used to prefer it to D'Angelo's Voodoo (that's stillcrazy, but heck, he used to bust out the Ralph Tresvant all the time too).

On this Toshi Kubota track, "Till She Comes," you might (read: should) recognize the drums - that's Questo, and the rest of the Roots crew (well, except for Black Thought; there's no sense in me posting that DJ Krush track, is there?) AND Larry Gold appear on the track (they produce one more track on the album, which also features production from Raphael Saadiq, of Toni Tone Tony/Lucy Pearl fame).


While we're on the Japanese kick, I don't seem to recall the DJ Krush/Toshinori Kondo album ever making it over to N. America except by import. It plays out in a similar way to that Bill Laswell/Miles Davis mix from around that time. I won't claim to be the biggest DJ Krush fan - no disrespect, but I still find it a little boring, but this track was a standout to me back in 96, though it's definitely dated now:


I found this track on an Ashley Beedle compilation that I found in a used CD bin in the middle of Shibuya (Lord, I wish I could still find my giant Africa medallion). From what I (hardly) remember, Son of Berzerk was one of the few productions that the Bomb Squad did outside of Public Enemy and Ice Cube, primarily because Flavor Flav was a member of its precursor, Townhouse 3, when he had met Chuck D:


I'll post odd shizz I found in HK when I was living there in another post.

Revisited: Long Time No Blah Blah Blah

While the rest of you have been wondering "why the hell am I reading this piece of shit?" "where the hell's that new post?", lemme tell you: moving's always a bitch, so leave it be, son (btw, Chad: thanks for returning my Chappelle show dvds). The only perk of the whole process was getting to sift through all these 90s albums again...oh, and the extra square footage for which to store them in.

Folk Implosion
The whole Dinosaur Jr. reunion thing had me wondering about Lou Barlow again, though I didn't have the patience to go through the Sebadoh catalog again. I won't deny Barlow's gift for writing the 3 minute pop song, but there's only so much pathos a guy can take in one sitting, so the Folk Implosion seemed like a better idea.

It's not a far stretch to place the Folk Implosion more squarely as being more noteworthy for Barlow than its other member, John Davis. Davis' solo tapes on Shrimper make it obvious as to why Barlow and him had a kinship to begin with (both being armed with 4-tracks and little in the way of self-editing), but also clearly indicate which of the two had a better knack for the stuff.

It might be for that reason, then, that the Folk Implosion made more of a mark when they ditched the 4-track Shrimper sound (though their first album was on Communion) for the lo-fi beat sampling they became known for from the Kids soundtrack. Here's "Nothing Gonna Stop" - I figure you can get their hit "Natural One" easily enough:


While I'm sure there's probably loads of examples that pre-date this, according to my spotty memory, there really wasn't much in the way of crossover in early/mid 90s N.American indie rock and other genres (note that I make an exception for UK/European indie rock, which would've made that crossover earlier in the game) - which probably gave rise to the later impetus to ditch the traditional guitar/drum/bass formula across the board. The Folk Implosion, apart from perhaps Beck, really seemed to me as one of few examples of a A-circuit college rock star from that time toying with hip hop craft, while it seems much more commonplace today.

"Nothing Gonna Stop" samples the Silver Apples' "Program" (though some claim it's "A Pox On You," my ears say otherwise), which were one of the earlier synth/drum machine groups, dating back to 68 or so (the liner notes have schematics for the "Simeon," featuring a set up of oscillators and pedals that, while relatively simple now, I can only assume would've been quite elaborate for pop music at the time):


Here's "Insinuation," from the Folk Implosion's last release on Communion. Dare To Be Surprised was probably a step backwards from the Kids soundtrack, stepping more in the lo-fi indie rock direction, but did feature a remix of the track from the Dust Brothers, a logical pairing:


The last Folk Implosion track I'll post is from One Part Lullaby, which should be counted as the duo's last album, though Barlow later released a further album with two other chumps as the "New Folk Implosion," which largely sounded more like Sebadoh than anything else (I'm still going to cite Davis' Shrimper tapes as reason enough to think this had to do more with Barlow losing interest in beats than Davis being some sort of beat-conducta):


'Course, all of this would have been in and around the same time that the Bristol sound was circulating the world. That said, here's an odd little Portishead track that isn't really talked about much - an instrumental track from the Help EP (after the first War Child comp):


PS - I gotta big up this blog, Golden Rock, which is posting archives from the Calgary local music scene, pre-CD.

Just Sayin'

I'm posting this because (i) I didn't get to watch this with you and (ii) you like spoilers anyway:



Plus I didn't have anybody to discuss it with at my office.

A Short Revisit: Frank Black & Teenage Fanclub

We're in the middle of moving (thus the brevity of this installment), but I came across this John Peel sessions EP from 1995, featuring Frank Black backed by Teenage Fanclub.

My memory might be a bit spotty, but by the time this EP came out, Frank Black was embarking on a new solo career that wasn't going quite as well as Kim Deal's was with the Breeders. It might seem odd now, but Frank Black was indeed being played on mainstream radio (though the Pixies never were), as I clearly remember hearing "Headache" on Calgary's AM radio, but that didn't even come close to how often I heard "Cannonball" at the mall. It was probably a good business move on Frank Black's part, then, to get this EP out, seeing as how Teenage Fanclub was still riding on the Bandwagonesque high (13 was rushed out shortly before this EP came out). At the time, Teenage Fanclub had an Album Of the Year under their belt and were definitely in the college rock 'A Circuit,' despite the fact that they don't get an iota of attention now.

The EP's not terribly momentous: Frank Black backed by anybody will inevitably sound like you'd think. Anybody familiar with the mid-90s Teenage Fanclub will recognize their guitar sound here and there, but it's pretty minimal. If anything, the EP is a good indication as to how much more poppy Frank Black's first two solo albums were in comparison to the Pixies.

More than anything else, the EP's just a funny reminder as to how transient and fickle taste can be. It's odd to see two bands go from ubiquity to nostalgia acts (well, more Frank Black/Pixies than Teenage Fanclub) in what is a relatively short period of time, and little oddities like this end up piling dust through the years. At the time, finding this was a little treasure; now, it's merely going in our storage bin.

(Note: the EP has since been re-issued following John Peel's passing last year.)

Here's Frank Black and Teenage Fanclub's cover of Del Shannon's "Sister Isobel":

I Don't Generally Take Requests...

...but what the hell, just this once. Here you go, Mihai:

10cc "Dreadlock Holiday"

Canned Air

We went to see Air last night, who somehow managed to cram at least 10 keyboards, a guitar rack, drums, at least 2 soundboards, computers, and band members on the tiny Richards on Richards stage. They played all the major hits from all of the albums, including the instrumental version of "Playground Love," but bejeezus, could they have played a longer set? The main set was over in a bit less than an hour, and the encore was over in 20 minutes. All in all, they started at around 10:30 and we were out of there by midnight. I can appreciate efficiency, but let's kick out the jams already, Air.

Here's the Hope Sandoval version of "Cherry Blossom Girl," which is way better than the album version.


I like how Godin looks like Barry Gibb in this picture; Dunckel generally looks like an elf.

Bigmouth Strikes Again

No disrespect, but I actually quite liked Mark Ronson's cover of the Smiths' "Stop Me," despite O-Dub's opinion to the contrary. See what you think:

Revisited: The Grand Muthaf#%ker of Them All

I was all set on continuing the 90s college rock posts (replace "all set" with "somewhat intending to" and replace "intending to" with "procrastinating from"), until I noticed the latest issue of Magnet, whose "75 Lost Classics" feature reads like a copy of CMJ from '95. The feature runs through a laundry list of perennial college radio favorites and B-list acts, bands consistently name-checked in articles from the time but still languishing in bargain bins across the country (the feature lists predominantly rock acts, with nary a mention of hip-hop, electronic music, etc).

The feature plays out largely like a high school reunion newsletter, interesting mainly for the "where are they now" bits on each of the bands. Not surprisingly, most of the bands have since splintered off into either different acts or day jobs, with only the more well-known of them having continued on towards some modicum of success (eg. Calvin Johnson, Cornelius, etc). Here's a cross-selection of what I remembered of them:

Cardinal
Though often critically lauded, I don't recall either of Richard Davies' former bands having quite as much airplay as his solo albums, and even the latter were over-shadowed with Eric Matthew's solo output. This was probably due to a couple of things: (i) Flydaddy Records (which released both Cardinal and the Davies albums) were at an obvious disadvantage compared to the indie monolith Sub Pop (which released Matthews' solo albums, at the time), and (ii) Matthews had the better voice. I picked this track, "You've Lost Me There," because it features both quite prominently, and because the vocal arrangements around 2 and half minutes in are k-i-l-l-e-r.



Papas Fritas

I never listened past Papas Fritas' first album, having never been a huge twee pop afficiando, only because little of the genre grabbed much of my increasing diminishing attention span. Of the pack, Papas Fritas were definitely enjoyable, having a bit more polish than the glut of lo-fi 4-track tapes that flooded the market (anybody remember Shrimper Records?), but most of their debut didn't particularly stand out more than any of the other solid albums that were out at the time. Until, of course, you hit the last 40 seconds of "Passion Play," which has some of the best string arrangements that indie rock has ever mustered, catapulting the Papas Fritas ahead of the rest, if only for that one song:



the Spinanes/Rebecca Gates

Me and Chad booked Rebecca Gates into Calgary based solely on the Spinanes' swan-song, Arches and Aisles. I had/have never heard Strand, my interest in Gates having piqued mainly because of article she had written in Raygun about Dusty in Memphis, and I don't think I had heard the solo EP until after we had booked the show (it was supposed to be packaged with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, which didn't happen for whatever reason, though I do remember wondering who Ted Leo was, at the time). I left town for whatever reason before the show (I went to Texas, I think), and didn't meet Rebecca until we brought her in for a solo acoustic show a second time around. Regardless, I was already on the bandwagon with Arches, which was largely a Chicago album with all the usual Tortoise suspects (it featured Sam Prekop on backup on one song), and completely enthralled with Ruby Series, which had a bit more space for the songs to breathe (even John McEntire's drum programming was reigned in to something more uncharacteristically subtle). This track, "the Seldom Scene," is still a huge favorite of mine, a late night torcher with light jazz fringes:


(this file is also avail from Badman Recordings, with another track to download)

Unrest

Again, I was late to the whole Teenbeat Records thing (see comments above re: twee pop). It was a matter of too-much-to-listen-to-not-enough-time, and thus I didn't catch much of it save for whatever came out on those annual samplers. Both my friends Rob and Chris drove Unrest into me, however, though it was probably more through Mark Robinson's latter outfit Air Miami (goddamn that "World Cup Fever") first. I kept up with it best as I could for a couple of years, but Robinson was still churning out more of the same (save for the Grenadine album), and from what Magnet tells me, that's still the case. I picked this track, then, because it's one of few Unrest/M Robinson songs that goes further than the formula and into truly classic territory (just listen to the friggin' drums, okay?):



Cornelius
Magnet picked Fantasma, Cornelius' first album available stateside, which Matador had picked up following its huge success with the other famed Shibuya group, Pizzicato 5. At the time, Jay and I had just started DJing at Pongo, and the management wanted as much J-Pop as possible (to match the Asian fusion menu, and a recipe for a Giant Robot overdose). There wasn't too much to come by in the record stores (this being pre-Napster and all), but I was traveling to Japan pretty regularly. If Pizzicato 5 (and, by extension, Fantastic Plastic Machine) was excessively kitsch, then Cornelius was excessively spastic, a sampling nightmare that you might see as a predecessor of Girl Talk, at least in terms of song structure. There's always one or two gems hidden on each P5 or Cornelius album - and the packaging in itself is always a thrill - but an impossibility to get through in its entirety, like a 45 minute sugar rush you just have to get through at least once. This song is from the 96/69 remix counterpart to 69/96 (both are also physically impossible for even a CD player to get through - they have 69/96 tracks, which older CD players find problematic), one of said gems:

Revisited: Guided By Voices

The early/mid 90s rock canon is a moldy old chestnut to tackle, considering it accounts for a huge percentage of what I had listened to in my formative years and thus a little bit hard to separate from pure nostalgia. This nostalgia, though, is of the few examples of "good" nostalgia, so here we are.

We recently watched the Pixies documentary, after which I realized something odd: the Pixies have somehow found themselves in the classic rock canon. People talk about the band with the same fondness that others mention the Police or 80s REM/U2, bands that are a still a little too odd to find themselves in the same light as Led Zeppelin but not odd enough to find themselves as renegade as the Stooges might still be considered to be. I mean, who can't name the next line to "Hey! Been tryin' to meet you"?

If you haven't noticed it already, Guided By Voices has slipped into a close second. While they still might have more of a cult following than the Pixies does, there's an awful lot of people that know "My Valuable Hunting Knife." Guided By Voices has that good ol' college rock gumption that people identify with en masse, and if you still don't believe me, go to a Ween show and see how many frat guys show up, and extrapolate that accessibility by a multiple.

The most identifying GBV album, in my mind, remains one of their earliest: Bee Thousand. The album doesn't truly start until its second song, "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows," much like Big Star's #1 Record doesn't really get going until "Ballad of El Goodo." From there, it's hard for any of the songs to skip a beat, considering most are two and half minutes in duration.

It's "Hot Freaks" that really gets me going. A combination of tape hiss, erotic imagery comprised mainly of culinary references: it's got e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. I'm generally bad for remembering lyrics, but it doesn't take long for me to remember when exactly to yell out "Hot Freaks!" (and it still makes me giggle when he sings about a "wet spot bigger than the Great Lakes").


Of course, as with the Pixies, fuck if I know what the hell Pollard's on about. Understanding isn't the point. There's a whole dissertation on what Pollard (and to a lesser extent, Tobin Sprout) might have meant when he sang about robot boys - read it, and more power to you - but when it boils down to it, Bee Thousand's mass appeal is about soundbites. It really doesn't matter whether you know what "Kicker of Elves" might refer to, but it sure is fun to sing along to, and catchy enough to nestle itself in mass memory.


This is why I figure Pollard has remained more memorable than Lou Barlow. Both were widely associated with the whole lo-fi thing in the mid-90s (Bee Thousand being the most exemplary example), but Sebadoh's certainly not the crowd fave of the two. I loved both at the time, but GBV's a lot more fun to listen to now, with Barlow's sadsack whining being the last thing I need to listen to now, having (hopefully) grown out of any adolescent angst (btw, the Dinosaur Jr albums aren't a great trip down memory lane, either).

That's not to say Pollard's not just as big of an asshole as Barlow - he is, but just a whole lot funnier. When I was 19 or 20, I ended up backstage at a GBV show here in Vancouver, and watched Pollard smoke up in the green room with one of the Zumpano guys while making fun of Eric Matthews (who they had apparently both met at a Sub Pop party). At one point they wanted to release a split 7" called "Fuck Eric Matthews" (the Zumpano guy since carried on with the New Pornographers).

This was they hey-day of whino-GBV, in the incarnation with Mitch Mitchell, Tobin Sprout, and Kevin Fennell. Pollard had pawned off his press obligations to Fennell, who I interviewed for hours before the show, watching him get progressively more and more drunk inside the Commodore, switching from thought-out soundbites ("I fucking love Canada!") to off-the-cuff rants ("I fucking hate Canada!"). This culminated in Fennell running out on a dinner tab and me leaving it to the V3 groupies to pay out.

It wasn't exactly glamorous, in the strictest sense, but it sure was exciting to watch. I re-read whatever GBV press was out, starting with what got me into the band in the first place, a sidebar piece Jim Greer had written in Spin (at the time I was convinced Greer/Blackwell/et al were the second coming of the 70s Rolling Stone). Greer subsequently wrote piece after piece on the band, and, more than that, joined the band (and married Kim Deal, who by that point was pretty much done with the Breeders, started the Amps, and released a number of singles with Pollard). Much like the rest of the GBV lineup from that period, Greer parted ways with Pollard (though he did write a whole book on the subject), which coincided nicely with when I parted ways with GBV too.

Since then, it's probably been around seven or eight years since I listened to Guided By Voices. Despite this fact, I did buy a few of the albums on CD to replace the cassettes I had, out of no better reason than wanting to own them, regardless of never wanting to actually listen to them. And the thing is, after so many years, I still know exactly when to shout out "Hot Freaks."